/Dev Quality of Life Improvements

There’s so much excitement going on for Into the Arcane, and so much more to come. Still, we wanted to take some time away from the new Posters revealing new units, cinematic teasers, and more to discuss some less visible but incredibly impactful changes coming to TFT. We’ve got three major quality-of-life improvements shipping with and before the launch of Into the Arcane on November 20th. Let’s get into them, starting with the biggest one that we’ve already alluded to:

OPENING ENCOUNTERS REPLACE PORTALS

Just two days ago, we shared our Magic n’ Mayhem Learnings article, in which we discussed why we were removing opening Portals and what we were replacing them with. In summary, Portals had obvious winners and losers in terms of popularity and desirability. The gap between the five most popular and least popular Portals is huge. Portals also pose heavy barriers to entry for new players, requiring them to read three different Portals and then formulate opinions on which ones they want. Lastly, we’re kinda tired of getting one-guy’d, no (not a real reason)?

So we’re replacing them with an Opening Encounter experience, but if you’re thinking these are like Encounters from Inkborn Fables, slow down; They kinda are, but not really. We’re going to have about 10 Opening Encounters at the release of the set, and they will be exclusively based on incredibly popular Portals or be an absence of an Opening Encounter altogether—think about how nice a vanilla game of TFT is every now and then.

So let’s meet our Opening Encounters, designed to provide only the good type of variability. An Arcane character will represent each Opening Encounter, here’s the layout:

No Opening Encounter Game (40%) - Piltover or Zaun

Prismatic Game (10%) - Heimerdinger

5% Prismatic Opener

2.5% Prismatic Finisher

2.5% All Prismatic - Ekko

Scuttle Game (10%) - Jinx

5% Scuttle Puddle

5% Crab Rave

2 Component Anvils (10%) - Vi

3 Gold Augments (10%) - Vander

Gold Subscription (4%) - Caitlyn

Loot Subscription (3%) - Sevika

Wandering Trainer (3%) - REDACTED

Powder’s Monkey (10%) - Powder

As the set continues, we’ll add two more Opening Encounters, but this list covers all you’ll be playing with on release.

ITEM BENCH IMPROVEMENTS

Opening Encounters aren’t the only quality of life improvement with Into the Arcane. The set also brings an update to the Item Bench. Items will now appear in a toolbar on the left side of your screen, allowing for easier visibility, more refined clicking, and a few usability buffs such as the ability to combine items in your inventory, rearrange items with ease, and allowing Removers and Reforgers to now stack! By moving off the Arena, our improved Item Bench can now hold 10 more items/consumables for a total of 20 max, but as a reminder, you should probably slam those items… And desktop players, you can now see your items during the Carousel, making it easier to figure out what component you need most…or second most if someone takes that Bow you wanted.

TEAM PLANNER CODES 

In case you missed it, we added Team Planner Codes to TFT in Patch 14.22. These are copy-and-paste codes that you can plop into your Team Planner to assemble the team comp you want. These Codes join the ranks of quality-of-life improvements to Team Planner, alongside Multi-teams support. With Multi-teams, you can save multiple team compositions to Team Planner, which you can flip through while playing. The last upgrade coming is a bit smaller, which is champion names. No more squinting at champion portraits; now you’ll have text names to help you discern who you’re looking for. These Team Planner upgrades give you the power to share your winning comps, borrow the winners from your friends and favorite streamers, or just share your boards like the innovator you are. Regardless of how you use it, share your thoughts and best-performing codes (we gotta climb too).

And that wraps up our Evergreen quality-of-life improvements. I’ll leave you with the Posters we revealed yesterday and the day before that cover new TFT-exclusive Arcane units entering the Convergence with Into the Arcane. Be sure to follow TFT wherever you scroll for more updates and reveals (I hear more reveals are happening all week!).